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Monthly Archives: November 2011

This week in Sciencism: Critical Eye, Ross Balch is joined by Natalie McKirdy, Dan Abrahmsen and David Balch. We discuss exorcism, gecko trade for traditional medicine, measels outbreak in the UK, hypothes.is new website, 7 year old girl who is “crying” stones and a multiple UFO event over Seattle.

In Sciencism: Critical Eye this week; host Ross Balch is joined by Dan Abrahmsen. In science news we discuss why people with sickle-cell anaemia get increased resistance to malaria, a computerised pathologist, magentic cows, the official extinctions of the western black rhino and a new “albino spider”. We talk about the issues of censorship and ideological bias affecting science jouralism. There is an urban legend about “seeing” a nuclear blast even if you are blind. We also have the skeptical news including spontaneous human combustion, strange objects seen on google earth in China, more Jesus pareidolia and strange numerology rituals surrounding 11/11/11. We round off the show by analysing the “evidence” for why powerade improves your performance.

This week on Sciencism: Critical Eye, Ross Balch is joined by Dan Abrahmsen and David Balch. We discuss Australia’s Shonky awards, UK “psychic” Sally Morgan denies Randi’s million dollar challenge, belief and confidence affecting performance, Boots remove homeopathy point of sale, Harld Camping apology, “Rod” spotted on NRL game and pareidolia in a testical. We also discuss what comprises good science.

Many of you may have heard of the rod phenomenon. Proponents of the idea belive that rods are creatures that can only be viewed on cameras, they may be angels or fairies or any number of things, mostly these rods can be explained by artifacts of video or photography, mostly when a bug flies close to the lens and the shutter spead is too slow to capture a focused image so a rod like blur appears.

Thanks to the huffington post I came across this video and could not belive anyone could mistake this for a “rod”, this has to be one of the least impressive videos of the phenomenon out there! To me it looks like someone in the next lane has took a swing sending the golf ball flying into the frame of the shot. What do you think?